The present invention is in the technical field of software programming for mobile communications devices. More particularly, the present invention is in the technical field of software programming for mobile communications devices with iOS operating system. Such devices allow people to communicate with others connecting with family, friends and businesses to exchange information or ask for help.
However, unscrupulous individuals can make illegal unsolicited phone calls to mobile communication devices. Unsolicited harassing phone calls disturb, generate anger and have negative psychological or financial impact on users. By definition telephone harassment occurs when someone intends to annoy, harass or threaten you by making lewd, indecent, obscene comments or requests, calls with no caller ID or repeated unsolicited robocalls.
Unsolicited calls can involve offers to sell financial products, time-share, political advertisements etc. The caller may attempt to deceive phone user into buying products or services. For example, a caller may falsely give the impression a warranty is about to expire, announce that the person has won a prize, but must first pay a processing fee in order to claim the prize, falsely accuse the person of being delinquent on a payment—just to name a few examples.
Unsolicited calls or messages may arrive at inconvenient times such as during dinner or even in the middle of the night. Further, users are often charged for the receipt of these unwanted communications. For example, a wireless carrier may charge the user for the receipt of a call or text message—regardless of whether or not it was an unsolicited advertisement. Calls that are answered may be added to the user's monthly calling minutes. Therefore users of electronic communications devices want to have the ability to automatically mute and eliminate unwanted calls. Although iOS operating system allows for manually blocking certain numbers it does not provide desired level of automation. Thus, there is a need to develop a system and technique to automatically ignore or receive certain incoming calls and messages.
Before iOS 6 developers simply hesitated trying to automate unwanted calls muting or even work on the issue fearing their software may be rejected when submitted for approval. iOS 6 introduced a feature called Do Not Disturb. Some applications attempt to resolve the issue by utilizing this new feature but they require complicated input from users. Further, users complain that such applications need to track their location which is a privacy issue. Further, latest iOS 7 and iOS 8 introduced a feature to manually add a number to a blacklist which actually redirects unwanted calls to a voicemail instead of muting them. None of the prior art provides fully automated method for muting unwanted incoming calls on mobile communications devices with iOS operating system.